Sunday, October 15, 2006

American Fascism?

I was invited and I accepted to join the blog discussion group Further Left Forum. I have enjoyed the discussions, and the diversity of the team members. My first day as a member, I became involved in a discussion about whether the USA is fascist. I'm writing this post, because I've had the discussion about what is fascism several times.

This document has been appearing at several left/liberal sites.

14 Points of Fascism

The author of this article compared the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet and identified 14 characteristics common to those fascist regimes. Below each of these points is a collection of news articles dating from the start of the Bush presidency divided into topics relating to each of these 14 points of fascism.

1.) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism:: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2.) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights: Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc

3.) Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4.) Supremacy of the Military: Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5.) Rampant Sexism: The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

6.) Controlled Mass Media: Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7.) Obsession with National Security: Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8.) Religion and Government are Intertwined: Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9.) Corporate Power is Protected: The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10.) Labor Power is Suppressed: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11.) Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts: Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

12.) Obsession with Crime and Punishment: Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13.) Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14.) Fraudulent Elections: Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

The hatred towards George Bush43 is visceral. From A for Abu Ghraib to Z for zealotry, there are legitimate reasons not to like Bush and company. The conservatives who post here, are often more critical of him, than liberals. All this doesn't mean the US is fascist.

The reason it is so important to me, is because it's a serious question of strategy and tactics. If I believe Bush is a politician I personally dislike and disagree with, is different than how I would relate to him in a fascist society.

Leon Trotsky wrote a pamphlet calledFASCISM What It Is and How To Fight It. It was written in 1944, in response to what is called "third period Stalinism". It was Stalin's ultra-left period, where social-democrats were labeled social-fascist and the enemy. That policy curtailed communists uniting with social-democrats to stop Hitler. By mislabeling social-democrats as fascist, it allowed Hitler to gain power. By mislabeling Bush fascist, you will not win your political program under a bourgeois democracy.

I think when liberals today call Bush fascist, they are actually supporting the Democratic Party, with extreme rhetoric. If you believe the US is a fascist country, I have to ask some questions. Are you armed and underground? Is your blog shut down? Do you leave your house at night? If Bush is a fascist, what is Bill Clinton? Do you expect to be arrested for your views?

Back to Trotsky, "When a state turns fascist, it does not mean only that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance the patterns set by Mussolini -- the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role -- but it means first of all for the most part that the workers' organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism...."RENEGADE EYE

I think the fundamental aspect of "fascism" as opposed to mere totalitarianism is the effort to use the state to weld the classes together.

Nationalisation, combined with vertical unions where bosses and workers of the same industry were grouped in "trade unions" together is an example.

Formally, of course, the position of the fascist state in this is as "mediator", but is necessarily pro-capitalist in trying to keep the status quo afloat.

I think that an important part of the growth of fascism is that it was a response to socialism, trying to find an prevent class war and raise a supposedly classless ideology - nationalism to weld the whole population together.

beatroot: I'm not clear if you understand, the purpose of the post, was that even though democratic concepts are threatened, doesn't mean I believe it's fascist. I disagree as a whole, with the 14 point program. I don't understand taking out one point to talk about.

Nothing conspiratorial in your link. If it was about a conspiracy, it would be secret and unknown to Timesonline.UK.

It really depends. Fascism changes and has never been the same. I like to think about it as a ultra militaristic, corporatist, nationalist, and authoritan country/society but I think now it's really just an ultra nationalistic society. Is the US fascist? Well, it does fit into the 14 point bill but then again, so would alot of different countries. Stalinist Russia which prided itself on anti-fascism would fit that bill with 3 or 4 exceptions.

I agree with those ,like Broder, making the point that what should concern supporters of democracy is not the either-or question (either it is a fascist state or is not)but whether a trend can be discerned that should warn us to possible dangers.Just as in the Evil vs Good debate, the exact definition of labels are not as important as realizing that the tendencies exist within each individual and that these potentials exist within any form of state (in a sense uniting us)It is the duty of the citizen to remain vigilant and to devise systems to check these tendencies and this potential.This is what is troubling to me concerning the US, that these checks are being dismantled.And that individuals seem to have amnesia concerning these potential dangers.That is why this is far from being a "silly discussion." As for "people in the US have all the rights they need", beatroots memory does not even extend as far back as hurricane Katrina.A perfect example of what I am talking about.

What differentiated Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and, to an extent, Franco's Spain from Stalin's USSR was the fact that the worker's movement was completely eliminated in the aforementioned three and still remained in the last. Thus we can deduct that Trotsky is correct in his assessment of fascism.

In a true fascist society, labor unions and worker rights disappear. The prospect for progressive chance is haulted. People are essentially slaves to corporations, which are in turn slave to the government (the one aspect that differentiates fascism from state-capitalism).

Nationalism, police state status, and other Hollywood fascist qualities are actually attributes of reactionary states, which is a broader classification. All fascist states are reactionary but not all reactionary states are fascist.

In this sense, though, it would seem modern day fascist states are corporations like Wal-Mart (wage-slavery), Nike (sweatshops), and Coca-Cola (brutally murders trade unionists).

As for the U.S. being fascist? Nah. Not right now. But the diminishing role of unions in the workplace is cause for concern. Remember, Trotsky said fascism only occurs when the workers become too subordinate to corporate powers. Perhaps this is beginning to occur in the U.S. with the remooval of the labor union. I read somewhere that only 20% of businesses in the U.S. still formally recognize labor unions. Disturbing? Absolutely!

I just blog rolled you. I think you have one of the best discussions of the American (and world) socio-political condition I've found. I recommend this site to everybody I can. Beautiful and concise work.

Funny that the 14 points you quoted were actually raised in the original article in order to show that the fascist character of US politics is intensifying.

What I think is more important for activists is to understand the fact that the fascist/violent/repressive character of the state is inherent to it along with its continuing crisis. (At least that is the case in third world countries where the crisis brought about by monopoly capitalism is permanent and worsening.)

Because the state cannot provide the people with altenatives that will end rampant poverty, inequality and crisis, it resorts to deception, violence, political repression as means to preserve itself in power.

It is not an issue of whether you like or dislike Bush as a politician, rather, it is an issue of understanding that due to the crisis of the ruling system, Bush is capable of employing fascist methods (which he is doing now) to further strengthen capitalist reactionary rule in the US and in the world. And if it comes to a point where the people's movement and opposition is stronger than ever, the reactionaries will not afford to rule the same way as before and will sooner or later resort to open fascist dictatorship.

The "mislabing" concern is a matter of "tactics," correct. But the points raised must be viewed correctly in the light of united front work. What is essentially wrong in labeling the social-democrats as fascists is not the labeling itself but failing to isolate the narrowest target which was fascist Hitler. Thus limiting the united front and antagonizing potential allies. This is questionable if it is to be a matter of concern in the case of Bush.

Okay this subject is somewhat interesting, and the subject is absolutely not silly. Denying the substance of the subject or jumping to conclusions would engender the responsibility of egocentric culture with an obvious alienated political character on the facts right in front of your eyes in the holy graal quest of being informed in the sharp universal eye. First of all you have to define what "fascism" means inside american culture and outside this culture, instead of emulating universalism. As a socialist rejecting capitalism's doctrine, the philosophy of "know yourself first" cannot be in denial either of its own acts as a cause without studying consequences, otherwise it is indeed called "fascism".

You are free to think what you want. As a philosoph, free thinker, but not free on the land of freedom, because I have not been allowed to exit the US, and it has been 7 years already, I think it is pretty much obvious there are signs of "fascism" in the US on both aspects, meaning inside and outside the US (blind patriotism).

It is obvious that the US keeps practicing the philosophy of Heidegger the Nazi (we live in our time inside globalization exchanges) while practicing on the other side military might because its ego cannot be sustained outside military actions. On the other side, we got people like Sartres the french (who unfortunately passed away) and people like De Dieguez - a friend of mine in anthropoligical philosophy - who had met the pro nazis during WWII; and both of these guys agreed on the substance but with different opinions: liberators and opressors cannot be the same person, and this is why History confuses people, Americans right now, like they did with the french during the war in Algeria, ... etc

An anthropology analyzing the politics and the history of our species by scrutinizing its theological brain will observe that an imperial democracy moves in a new Andersen's tale where the naked king of the great Danish presents himself armed to the teeth. An anthropological psychoanalysis, therefore existential, of its power leads to the discovery of an unconscious of grace trapped in advance by falling in torture.

To sharpen the eyes of political Europe, one must specify how a simiohuman history strives to delineate the frontier between reality and myth, politics and utopia.

1 - The torpidity of the political spirit of Europe 2 - A Europe of an Andersen's tale 3 - Comparative psychophysiology of the Soviet ex-empire and the American empire 4 - Two edenisms 5 - Comparative analysis of concentration systems 6 - The Christian concentration camp 7 - A psychoanalysis of an American torture 8 - A recall of history 9 - Return to the anthropological psychoanalysis of the Sacred 10 - America and the theology of anguish

1 - The torpidity of the political spirit of Europe

Three major experiences marked the XXth century: Mussolinian Fascism, Hitlerian Nazism and Soviet Marxism. All three prefigured the seraphic forms which American imperialism would take with its cornucopia of the idealities, with a Messianic conditioning of opinion in the name of the myth of redemptive freedom, with the simplification of a field of vision conceptualized by an horizon of promising abstractions, with the promotion of a " Good " and an " Evil " mythified on the model of Manichean orthodoxies of salvation and damnation. But these immemorial molds of the sacred in black and white found their most simplistic and massive theological turn in the mythical edenism from which American imperialism has made its religious ornament.

When the psychobiological understanding of the strange appearance of the three monotheisms takes its first steps in anthropology, European's political reason remains trivialized by millenary administrative practices of the States. How the art of governing would'nt rebel against the constitution of an anthropology of the American imperialism which would illuminate the relationships between the American unconscious religiousness and the hyper-industrialization of modern democracies, and which would bring forth the theological foundations of the empire's polical unconscious ?

A rereading of the history of civilizations mind, a reflection nurtured by a profound knowledge of the evolution of our skull, a psychoanalysis of the bio-dreamlike life of a species whose mental unconscious is the prey of worlds divided between their paradise and their hell, all of these are necessary tasks.

The historians of the XXIst century will mention that in 2004, a great part of the European ruling class was so late in the radiographic knowledge of our species' two-phase brain that it was extremely constrained from understanding how the United States had become a schizoid empire, thus messianically expanding through the five continents, and that the irrepressible ambitions of this nation dichotomized by its "salvation" theology had to be observed in the light of the laws which govern the growth and which command the failure of the empires self-mythified by their religious seraphism. But moreover, it was urgent to become aware of the fate that governs the modern wars for the control of the new energy resources, in these times, the oil supply had become the key of the domination of the world. To capture the black gold reserves, the empire needed a strategy of abduction, which was in great contrast to the myth of the American empire's religious predestination. The planet's brain had become the hostage of the theopolitic of these soteriological democracy's annunciations.

In truth, Nazism and Marxism had already resolutely presented redemptive and bloody forms of politics. But the first ideologies connecting to a dreamlike future of politics, therefore to a dream of salvation on the five continents, had only delayed the armed landing of the evangelist American dream, which had remained artificially under pressure and whose victory of 1945 was going to release an eschatological surge. Why did the European elites of the beginning of the third millennium still entirely ignored the religious nature of the "liberators" empires and their vocation to seize the world? They did not have at their disposal the keys to a critical anthropology which would have enabled them to decipher the biblical bases of political America. This was due to the fact that the leading classes of the time had an insufficient knowledge of history. For a long time the most informed men of CLIO had tried to arm their memory with the elementary reference marks provided by chronology.

One remains disconcerted reading, in 1986, under Jean Favier's pen, member of the Institute and general director of the Archives of France, an explanatory text illustrating the lack of information of the "cultivated general public " to whom was addressed the remarkable "Chronicles of Humanity" published by Larousse:

"The American victory in the war against Spain in 1898 transformed the United States, a regional power, into a world wide imperialist power which appropriated a vast insular area in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The old Spanish possessions - Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines - were placed under American protectorate. Central America, the "back-yard of the USA" and the Far East became the usual theatres of the American imperialist policies. A maritime power on the Atlantic and the Pacific, the USA could secure their possessions with only two distinct fleets. A colossal policy intended to procure maritime equipment, started by President Theodore Roosevelt, made it possible for the United States to become in 1907 the second naval power of the world, behind the United Kingdom, although they occupied the fifth rank three years earlier. In the center of the strategic conditions of the American imperialism, we find the Panama Canal, a link between the two oceans and the only means to efficiently guarantee the colonial empire. President Roosevelt proclaimed the United States right to intervene directly in the interior affairs of the Central American countries to guarantee their safety, when the American political or economic interests required it." (p.937)

This overview of the situation courageously appeared "committed" at the time. How was it possible that educated France had not learned these facts during primary school?

2 - A Europe of an Andersen's tale

More than one century has passed since the war of 1898. For almost sixty years, the American had sovereign garrisons on European ground - garrisons therefore set up in enclaves of a foreign state's territory on our European ground. It is a reign that allows us just now to understand that since 1945 the planet's history is that of the expansion of an American empire. The fall of the Berlin Wall did not stop its impetus and September 11, 2001, only accelerated its pace. This phenomenon can only be compared to the immense delay that the Hellenic world and its pedagogues showed to the discovery of the rise of Rome and to explain it to their schoolboys. But who could imagine that such a blindness, considered to be extraordinary by the historians of the ancient world, would happen again millenniums later, and this only because no one was teaching the rising generation that politics is the language of history? How is it that the American presence all around the Mediterranean sea seemed taken for granted and accepted, and that Europe was only asking for a modest share of this imperium?

When the United States announced that they were going to build in Bagdad their largest embassy and that it would employ three thousand people; when everyone was seeing the American empire building military bases in Iraq intended to accommodate a hundred and twenty thousand men in residence; when Paul Wolfowitz, assistant secretary of defense, expected that there would

" not be any change in our military deployment between June 30 and July 1st, unless we remain there on the invitation of an Iraqi sovereign government, which will ask us to stay until the killers, as those who did the atrocities of Falloujah, are put out of state of harm" ( Le Monde diplomatique, May 2004),

how come the whole world was transported in a reversed tale of Andersen (*) , in which the king wasn't naked in the middle of his "brightly-colored chamberlains", but armed to the teeth? How come the aureola of democracies which was floating over the king's head emitted such powerful rays that the king's heart was metamorphosed as a humans right's church in front of the whole universe?

Such an apostolic mystery could only be explained by an anthropology of holiness as strong as Andersen's spectrography, if this was possible. In these distant times, Noam Chomsky evoked "the empire's autism ". But the descent into the depths of an autism crowned by divine grace required not only a quest in the kingdom of the mystical unconscious of our species, but a psychoanalysis of theology that exceeded the means of investigation that were those of the psychobiological genius of the great Danish writer.

To try to understand Andersen's tale, one must shed a comparative light on Marxist and American edenism. This will make it possible to go down in the first anthropological mysteries of modern empires and to exert us to make a little progress in the speleology of the dreamlike life of simiohuman history. Thus a genealogy of the politico-religious unconscious of the monotheisms will make us witness the conclusion of an alliance between sacred orthodoxies and democratic totalitarianism.

3 - Comparative psychophysiology of the Soviet ex-empire and the American empire

One remembers how the expansion of the Soviet empire rested on the rise of the world wide proletariat to the rank of redeemer of mankind. Modern messianism was singing an hymn to the planetary victory of justice over the injustice of capitalism. The promise of salvation on earth had benefited from the guarantee of a foreteller and of an infallible intercessor of a working class deliverance on an international scale. The new vehicle for the Scriptures of Freedom was called the " historical process ". This means of transporting of the happy and the blessed towards a tangible paradise was introducing a new type of split in the simiohuman brain, between the religious dream and reality.

The panoply of the cerebral dichotomies already indexed in the nomenclatures of schizoid theologies of the time was from now on being armed with a dialectic and a genealogy of "concrete truth " on the whole inhabited earth. When the armies of the " Warsaw Pact " were seizing a nation - Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary - they were installing in these countries governments won over to a new Vatican, and supposedly expressing the will of the sovereign people. This is why these countries were called people's democracies, in opposition to middle-class democracies. Marxism had carried the 1789 liberation principles to their soteriological achievement in Russia, where they had found their Holy See. The Western States legitimated these wars known as " liberating wars". They were considered based on a ground mystic of bliss which Christianity had relegated to the beyond only after a century of setbacks on earth. Nobody was fooled by the disguises in international law of a tyranny validated by a semi-religious finalism.

Facing this eschatology to conformity with the sacrilizing mentalities of orthodoxe Russia, the American empire had been able to consolidate its democratic soteriology, to extend and to win a despotism which had capitalist Europe shaking . But following the collapse of Marxist edenism, the United States naturally took care not to withdraw their troops from the Old Continent - on the contrary, they reinforced the guardianship which they had been exerting since 1945 by the means of NATO and they perennialized in times of peace the mission that this military organization had achieved during the cold war. Controlled Europe was agreeing to it.

Under these conditions, it is crucial to reach an anthropological analysis, therefore biopsychic, of the parareligious weapons which will make it possible for the American empire to relay the Marxist dream. The theologies of the two empires were meeting in a common paradisiacal dream, a dream rooted in the origins of Judaism and Christianity because messianisms are all grounded in the myth of an escape out of the prison world described as " temporal ", the prison world of "ritual Egypt " which the Exodus episode had concretized the original symbolic system under Moïse's commandment. The examination of the differences in method and of the parallelisms that we can notice in the two empires of Eden will make it possible to specify the schizoid structure of the dreamlike brain that these two messianisms are sharing.

4 - Two edenisms

The evangelism and angelism belonging to the democratic type of the universal dream of an Eden suffer from two handicaps whose impact was discovered by Marxism only with great delay. The first handicap results from the fact that "human rights " and "freedom " are by definition ideal, therefore abstract by nature, which generates a sacred veneration capable of protecting them from an examination of the degree of application to the real history of their seraphic universality. For this reason, they appear of a more theological usage, therefore more dreamlike, than Marxist edenism, which was dreaming of putting a very large proletariat in immediate and direct possession of its rights and its powers on earth. But these salvation prerogatives remained attached to the needs and the wishes of labor status, therefore related to an ignorance and an inculturation which predisposed the proletariat to an incapacity of efficiently exert by itself the responsibilities of a leading class. Also the proletarian elites went through the party's school charged with teaching them the catechesis of a new ecclesiocracy.

This pedagogy was so well copied on those of the seminaries, that the collective high office and prestige the labor class claimed for itself were fatally leading them, like all churches, to the devaluation of individual capacities for the advantages of a powerful collective ego. Such a cerebral dichotomy necessarily led to the destruction of talent and genius, therefore ruining the grounds of civilization. On the other hand, this final catastrophe was outlined against a half century term. Meanwhile, Marxist edenism could have at will the support of the crusaders of masses' salvation, crusaders whose compact and blind regiments were receiving the parareligious support of legions of apostolic intellectuals coming from the middle-class. The American empire, on the other hand, was based on a more verbal edenism, therefore looked more vaporous, but grounded on a resolute individualism, therefore on the intense valorization of particular merits. A messianism based on quality constitutes a political handicap and advantages. The war on Iraq was going to show the difficult divide of this situation.

The Marxists masses did not have the eyes to observe the Soviet empire in action. Neither did they see the Kremlin putting its hands on the resources of the nations it occupied, just as the faithful ones of the XVIth century could not see the Church piling up a treasure of war through the sale, at its own desks, of entry bonds to paradise. On the other hand, the American empire's edenism was offering cynically and for everyone to see the spectacle of its industrial and commercial ambitions. By rehabilitating the spirit of lucre in the posterity of Calvinism, the good capitalist conscience insulted the worship of poverty linked not only to the Christianity of the origins, but also to Buddhism. Moreover, the source of asceticism is the Stoicians' philosophy.

While the proletarian dream was nurtured by ignorance and the simplicity of spirit of the candidates to a future Eden, American edenism could only be openly propagated by the joint force of weapons and industry. The military victory was accumulating ruins and piling up dead bodies for the sole purpose of filling the order books of the big American companies. As to the nations called to grow rich at the sides of the warriors of business and enticed by the to profit from the gigantic and profitable market of rebuilding at high price the losers' pulverized dwellings, their avid complicity was also associating them to the hard verdict of what the religious edenisms are necessarily tributary here below: success on the ground. The cerebral dichotomies whose apparatus of the Sacred is that of political Utopia, are subjected to the expected verdicts of the court of victory and of defeat of weapons.

Marxist edenism had called upon a crusade of the poor and had encountered a universalization of stupidity. The American edenism was holding up the standard of lucre clothed in political euphoria. But the anthropological difference between the empires of dreams and of salvation is even more instructive if one compares the systems of repression which they generated.

5 - Comparative analysis of concentration systems

The Stalinian gulags were supposed to purify the world of the plague of capitalist profit. They were working on the glossy model of the conversion and the redemption of the sinner. The labor camps were at the same time punitive and cleansing. The new catechism was managed with roughness. It was leading the sinner to a paradise at once far away and about to land at any moment. When the fanaticism of proletarian salvation had seized the Marxist myth, it had accumulated the piles of the corpses of Pol Pot. Facing such titanic setbacks, democratic holiness believed to have won its case, all the more than the recalcitrance of Karl Marx's victims to conquer the supposed freedom, equality and fraternity at the price of the extinction of capitalist profit appeared inveterate. How is it that under such seemingly favorable conditions, the invasion of American democratic edenism caused a more immediate and more violent revulsion than the one that brought down the tyranny of a Soviet leading class as unfaithful to its own orthodoxy as the Roman clergy toward the Gospels?

Initially, the prophets of the New World could not believe their eyes concerning how the stubborn impiety of the Iraqi people made Iraqis take arms against the New World's holy idealities. And yet, the new religion of redemption and of salvation was self confident, devilishly jaunty, full of sufficiency and boasting. Wasn't its natural lightness the legitimated product of its innate innocence? But it was too much convinced of the inferiority of the peoples remaining on earth and located at so great a distance from the paradise of the new chosen ones. The mocking and laughing pace of that new religion's promises were not forgiven.

But then, one could barely understand the sacredness which allowed women amused to be photographed at the sides of the defeated left naked like worms and attached by the neck to a leash for dogs. These tamers- angels, specialized in the exercise of the virtues of democracy, were illustrating another weakness of American edenism. I already emphasized that, from its point of view, the expansion of the marxian empire had progressed as a creeping model, and without resorting to massive and prolonged carnages, because it had been secured by armies of workerselated by a mystic of deliverance. The capitalist yoke had been broken, it was said, by the inaugural Revolution of 1917, then by the bloody weapons of Utopia and the heresy proceedings.

On the other hand, Washington's edenism was dressing up wild beasts in a circus of Goodness. By holding up the banners of democratic idealities on a worldwide scale, the White House was inaugurating the seraphic era of despotism. As a result, the American military conquests needed to get a planetary holly clothing, which could only be if other angelic nations were also coming to occupy, by the use of weapons, the conquered territories for the benefit of the empire of Goodness. The spectacle of this gigantic conversion of force into virtue had gone as far as being a caricature. We saw microscopic States sending about fifty soldiers, because it was important to conquer in a hurry the symbol of justice and right which their physical presence were supposed to embody. The universality of the ethics engraved on the blazon of apostolic democracies was turning over against its apostles. The Chrism (Saint chrème) with which one had coated bombs and guns was flaking off. Marxism, on the other hand, was feeling sufficiently legitimated by the Gospels of saint Marx not to have to call the armies of capitalist sin and stain in reinforcement of freedom and of the sovereignty of the people.

Also the revelation through the broadcast, on the five continents, of the maltreatment and tortures by the American army at Guantanamo, then in Iraq, had ruined in only one definitive blow the theology of the American Eden, while the Marxist Eden had been able to flourish before the advent of a civilization left to the ubiquity of its own theatre. The empire's evangelism was telling, from now on, the adventures of a universal conscience in the way of a comic strip with multiple episodes.

Initially, Washington had tried to keep the sinners in an unhappy, but accidental adventure: it was only a question of "brebis galeuses" - the English language calls them "black sheep" -, as the White House was saying , whose exemplary and fast punishment was going to be enough to purify Eden, at a moment stained by an extraordinary contest of circumstances. But soon a tightly written report of more than fifty pages of a General engaged on the ground had confirmed that there was indeed an institutionalization of torture systematically and expressly authorized by the highest authorities of the army and by the American State.

How come the myth of freedom on which the New World's democracy was resting since Abraham Lincoln, had produced a concentration camp system that some had succeeded in hiding for a few months, but that appeared to everyone as natural as the Russian gulags?

For scientific anthropology, the essential effect of this discovery results in the spectacularly confirmation of the sacred origins of torture so that it became impossible not to connect it to the Manicheist origin of all monotheistic religions, something that I have emphasized since September 11, 2001 on my web site. How do we study thoroughly our analyses of the cerebral dichotomy of which mankind suffers at the present stage of its evolution ?

6 - The Christian concentration camp

The first theological model of Gulags, of Nazi concentration camps, and of the torture rooms imagined by the democratic empire isn't anything else than the hell of Christians and Moslems, those eternal atrocities are so thoroughly described by Dante that they appear among the pearls of the Sacred to be ranked among the treasures of world literature. Facing such anthropological obviousness, how long will the traditional social sciences be able to take advantage of the status of a science based on a voluntary blindness which was believed to be exclusively reserved for theological thought? Isn't it time to analyze how a specifically "scientific " blindness can respond to an "angelism" common to " experimental knowledge ", to politics and to the Sacred?

How can we call rational a knowledge of the escaped prisoners from an animal world that would remain timorously silent over the pathetic articulation between dreamlike worlds and real worlds, an articulation which our brain seems stamped from birth? The time has come to give a look at the holy synergies between dreamed cruelties of the Sacred and the cruelties put into practice by political schemers, or we will have to give up any anthropology whose rationality would be to the scale of this spectacle. One calls "scientific" an objectivity able to illuminate the subjectivity of illusory problematics that blindness manages to be adorned.

Than, it appears that if the "angelism" of human consciousness is the ground of all theologies which claim to be rooted in the divine election of the "justs", and if the Nazi, Marxist and American concentration camps share a theology of torture precisely founded on the proclamation of the innocence of the torturers, then this model of devotion refers point by point to the staging of Christian paradise and hell. Therefore the chosen ones on earth are proclaimed the champions of piety and justice. Their seraphism is so innate in this world that they don't spare a glance for the damned that they watch being cooked slowly in their underground oven. As the sovereign of the universe of these savages is none other than the savage creator of the world, who raised the devil to the rank of guardian and general administrator of his gigantic Gulag, scientific anthropology leads to the psychobiological spectrography of the three single gods. As a result, the scientific study of simiohuman theology enters the field of historical and political documentation on cerebral and moral evolution of mankind; and the history of the psychophysiology of idols becomes the key to a real scientific anthropological knowledge of humans.

As long as a religion is believed true, and therefore is sincerely practiced by tens of million of faithfuls, hell plays a central part in politics because the strategy of punishment is the heart of politics , thus the leading classes and heaven join together to discipline mankind. The brutality of tortures is thus the barometer of the gravity of the danger to be fought: the infinite cruelty of "God " is declared proportional to the need its " holy justice" has to fight the plague of sin. The Messianic wars of democracies considered to express the will and the concerns of their celestial rearms of values, the comparative observation of the modes of torture of Nazism, Marxism and the American empire appears to be the privileged instrument of the anthropological weighing of the simiohuman political brain.

Naturally, when the political weakening of religions makes them seraphic, their irresponsibility turns them unsuitable for the anthropological weighing of the species. This is why the Christian theology of tortures is heuristic only from the first century to the twentieth; but the Roman theology of hell has not changed an iota, therein the documentation of anthropological science cannot be supported by the apparent irenicism of catechism since Vatican II.

7 - A psychoanalysis of American torture

A science of mankind based on critical observation of the brain of the civilizations of liberation and salvation requires a comparative psychoanalysis of the three monotheist theologies and of their history, as well as the examination of their ideological copies. So the schizoid brain of Marxian type rested on the execration of the empire of evil that was in its view embodied by the capitalism of the XIXth and XXth centuries. The religious brain of the American type gives birth to a collateral theological empire rooted in immemorial time : Evil and Good refer to the myth of the innocence of the First Couple. We find GW Bush declaring that nothing appeared more enigmatic to him than the hostility of the external world towards the United States; and he claimed to the face of the world: " We who are so good!"

American torture appears so well connected to the biblical innocence of the inhabitants of Eden, that it presents itself under the features of the most common piety. An anthropology, sacrilegious by definition, because it is scientific, must explain the genealogy of the divided life of the brain of humanity since this strange species escaped from the animal world. I can only propose some political and historical leads for a research on the universality of the simiohuman's unconscious which controls this existential bipolarity.

Everyone knows that in the West the torturer was condemned to hide with all his family as if he were plague-stricken, because of the theological shakiness of the divino-human justice, which condemned murder, but legitimated the death penalty and the infernal tortures. As for America, it tries to escape from the dichotomy of its religious unconscious by making cherubic its policy of the purification of the universe. One will notice, in this spirit, that American soldiers guilty of tortures in Iraq are seraphic and that they kindly accept being photographed at the sides of their victims, undoubtedly in order to enrich their album of patriotic memories. Democratic senator Mr. Patrick Leahy, former president of the commission of judiciary affairs, sees in this the proof that they are protected by the authority line. But this authority covers them because of the religious unconscious that controls American politics. Without an anthropological knowledge of this unconscious, historical science is blind, so much so that the particularity of the smiling Eden is precisely to metamorphose the humiliations inflicted to the prisoners as expressions of faith of the empire of Goodness, which calls for the need to promote bliss on earth. The purification of the world by torture belongs to a form of piety. .

8 - A recall of history

To understand it, it is necessary for us to return for a moment to the imperial explosion of 1898 evoked above by Jean Favier. At that time, the Secretary of State Elihu Root wrote that the American soldier is

" different from other soldiers of all the other States of the world since the world started. He is the vanguard of freedom and justice, of law and order, peace and happiness. "

The perfect achievement of the will of God on earth had made it possible for America to spread its kindness and its blessings in Puerto Rico, in the Philippines, in Mexico and among the indigenous populations of the Pacific. The " national nobility of soul" had left the limbo to land in real history. American democratic messianism is a reproduction or a stand-in of the myth of incarnation - it comes down from the heavens of divine justice.

The nation - expressly designated by the divinity to achieve its projects in this world - conforms itself to the prophesied mission since the XVIIth century by Calvinists, who were already seeing America as the " redeemer of nations ". For this reason, it is predestined to build a " city of paradise " that all nations will have to imitate. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson added:

"I believe that God placed in us a prophetic vision of freedom (...) I nurture the hope that we were selected, in an outstanding way, in order to show to the other people of the world how they must march towards freedom."

The defeat of Nazis and the fall of Communism were going to confirm the national conviction which expresses Francis Fukuyama's vision in The End of History (La fin de l'histoire): after eight thousand years of social development, humanity discovered that democratic and liberal capitalism finally carried out the final synthesis that universal History was waiting for impatiently, between " moral goals and fundamental national interests " of America. Also Duncan Hunter, member of the Chamber of the representatives can write:

" America is the strength of good. Our troops changed the world and built a future for the Iraqi people. "

As for Tom Delay, the leader of the majority in the House, he does not fear to add:

" The operation Iraqi Freedom , whatever the rift it showed, is an absolute good. "

9 - Return to the anthropological psychoanalysis of the Sacred

What is the degree of the religious guilt of the tortured ones that will come about from this mental world? Paradoxically, the damned will be given a floating theological status, because the redemptive good conscience from which the torturers profited, and which makes the torturers safe from a contamination by evil, which abounds in the outside world, [this redemptive conscience] reduces the weight of the damnation pronounced by the angels' justice, a damnation that weighs heavily on the shoulders of the heretics, but without crushing them completely. It is known that Calvin is a theological son of Saint Augustin and that the bishop of Hippone is the first theorist of the fatality of sin of which are burdened for all eternity the wretched that the unfathomable mystery of the creator's arbitrariness did not predestine to salvation.

But the author of the Confessions is also the theologian of grace: the infinite freedom and power of the creator can save in extremis the worst of infidels. This is why American torture is held in suspension somewhere between eternal flames and Eden thus, so to speak, in the " midair of the atmosphere ", according to Descartes: we will not gouge out the eyes of the prisoners, we will not pull out their nails, but we will starve, dehydrate, sodomize them, we will let them be gibed, exposed naked to the threat of aggressive dogs, because the principal torture, from the point of view of a theology of predestination to salvation or to damnation, is the torture of a moral humiliation in front of God.

The tortured ones are guilty in advance because the creator collectively judged them to be from their birth strangers to the blessings the kingdom of Good could bring to them and they are condemned to refuse its benefits. The consequence of this theology of "self-innocenting" is that Americans are sincerely astounded to find themselves rejected and hated by the rest of the world. Quite simply, they cannot get over the fact that they find themselves the victims of a such great injustice, while " being so good ", they who bring to a lower civilization the religious treasures of democracy and its Gospel of Freedom. Not for one moment do these idolaters of their heaven doubt of the legitimacy of the war that led them straight in these oil-bearing places, since God is their guide and that He took them by the hand to have them discover the country of Canaan. It is thus without batting an eyelid that the flabbergasted by the absolute condemn those that resist their occupation and that they qualified them as " terrorists " and "killers" obstinately rebellious to the deliverance which the heaven of democracy brings to them totally free of charge.

We also saw all the American political community, John Kerry ahead in the lead, declaring itself "outraged" by the decapitation of an American industrialist as retaliation to tortures of tens of thousands of Iraqis in the American prisons . The empire's good conscience was so well reinforced that the future White House candidate could state:

" Now, there is no doubt that we must continue ".

However, this last adventure is understandable only in the light of a radiography of the theological unconscious of the nation: absolute evil, that of the Scriptures, which obeyed to the law of retaliation, is opposed to the "self-innocenting" of the elected officials. The Calvinistic edulcorating of the principle "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" is seen as the world advent of holiness on earth; but an angelized repression leads to the proliferation of refined forms of cruelty - and initially to interminable methods of torture, therefore adapted in advance to the incurable character of the sin to counteract!

The unanimity and the immediate reaction of the American political community in front of a murder committed according to the "old law " school shows very well the psychological knot of imperial theology: the main thing is to legitimate before God the war of conquest and the occupation. Naturally, Kerry isn't duped : he knows that the theological mask is used to sanctify the final Americanization of the Mediterranean region. But the need to reinforce the religious cover of the Empire's expansion around the Mare Nostrum is nonetheless a revolution ; moreover, what will political Europe become if it condemns the empire for ethical reasons without grasping the essential, which is not theological: it is a question of being opposed to the territorial expansion of an empire, and it is for this purpose that an anthropology able to decipher the unconscious of different theologies is an essential intellectual weapon.

10 - America and the theology of anguish

We can see that an existential psychoanalysis of theologies is a key to history and to politics. But at the same time, American messianism is eaten up from the inside by the cruel obviousness that the ruin of Marxist heresy and of its deadly immorality neither sanctified the globalization of trade, nor legitimated the gigantic profits of the great international companies. How will the thickest armor of political innocence be endorsed ? How will one remain happy and hopping in the universe of a blinded Eden of "Goodness"? How will one attend the spectacle of a civilization horrified by the hell of capitalist profits whose brutality replaced the Stalinian hell? The theological drama of America, inaugurated with the rout of Vietnam, lands in the third millennium.

Then the other face of Calvin's theology arises, expressing doubt and anguish: the believer is never sure to be the chosen one. What definitive proof would he have? Nothing other than the abundance of material goods the divinity wishes to grant him. This is why, in the beginning, the Genevan Calvinists were both ascetics and rich bankers. The American defeat in Iraq will be a terrifying theological trauma, because it will be the public proof of the disowning of the nation of the chosen ones by the divinity. Naturally, all this will be happening in the non-explored depths, therefore carcinogenic, of the religious unconscious of the nation. But how does one explain that Saint Augustin's God made thirty two nations accomplices of a torturer? We wish a lot of pleasure to the future theologians of the American God. Modern anthropology only raises the true question, the only question with a scientific status : why do the escaped ones from zoology [i.e. from the hominid branch of evolution] use their 1,5% advance on the psychogenetic capital of Chimpanzees to elevate themselves in so many different ways in the holy sky.

Does a humanity torn between its animal impulses and the failures of its leaps up to pseudo angelical worlds testify to an incurable savagery? To find it out, isn't the rational knowledge the new pedagogue of hope? An anthropology based on the psychophysiological observation of theologies and attentive to the diversity of their schizoid representations of the world, appeals just as easily to the spectrography of religious beliefs of different times and places, as to the weighing of the bipolar mental structure which commands them all.

(*) : All the European children know the famous Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen ( 1805-1875 ), whose most famous tale told the story of a king that extraordinary dressmakers - and doubtless philosophers - claim to dress with the most luxurious ornaments and never ever seen in any kingdom of the earth. But these clothes are invisible, because they are quite imaginary. The prestige of the makers is so eminent and they are so overcome with admiration in front of the beauty of their work that nobody, at the court dares to acknowledge that they can't see the brightness, the wealth and all this splendor. Then the day arrives that the monarch presents to his people the magnificence of his new royal clothing. All courtiers faint with admiration in front of these wonders, except for a child who shouts: " The king is naked". Morality: the truth comes out of the mouth of the children; morality: the illusion leads the world; morality, GW Bush is a democratic king. His ornaments are idealities with angels' wings which make the nations hover in the sky of justice and freedom. But this time the child shouts: " But he is armed up to his teeth! Such armored cars, such artillery, such prisons are the armor of this king ! "

Hey Ren I was not even able to post my comments on my own blog, I don't even know why, so here is my comment:

You are welcome. Challenge me, then I will challenge you on your blog as well, but be careful coz I will unfortunately target american dysfunctional culture. I am a multi culturalist guy with economics and social backgrounds inside international cooperation: I reject my own education.

I also lived in communist countries when i was younger, while I did not enjoy their governments but did enjoy its people. I am 36 years old now. I do look behind my past, and I feel angry sometimes. :(

In the US, depression can be treated but not anger!!!!!!! And fuck these american drugs.

One day I will tell you my story in the US, and I will tell you that I hate the american system, and my hate is 100% legal: I do not have the right to get out of the US. It has been 7 years that I am not allowed to exit the US; I am an alien in the US, without right, despite I am married to a US citizen, I do not have a damn right in this *fucking* country. I only have the right to shut the fuck up; and I do think it comes from my political opinions since Americans elected this fucking asshole of Bush.

So in the US I may be an alien, but in the eyes of the french system I am a french expat. I contacted the french interior ministry (AKA Nicolas Sarkozy), since I do have an influence on the french system, and I do mean a very big influence because my father belongs to the french/european political system, with political influences. In France we've always been cleaned and cleared up: if ever any political system fucks up to represent a french abroad, and if the french state is unable to represent a french citizen abroad, then we do have the right to retaliate ourselves. By chance the french interior ministry contacted my father 3 weeks ago and the French Ministry is asking the US why I was not able to go back to Europe during these 7 years.

I shut my mouth but it is going to be a political matter anytime soon. I just don't say anything right now.... but it is going to appear in the european newspapers and it is called "VENGEANCE" and I will make sure to expose my viewpoint.

1. First verse, first line: what is "le vol noir des corbeaux" and what does this image evoke ?2. First verse, lines 3 and 4: why is it clear that this song is a call to arms ?3. Second verse: what means and weapons are the comrades exhorted to use in the armed fight ?4. Third verse, first two lines: what acts are the partisans involved in and what physical and mental condition are the partisans displaying ?5. Third verse, last two lines: what are resistants expected to do, compared to people in other countries ?6. Last verse, second line: what comfort is offered to the partisan who fails in his mission ?7. Last verse, line 3: to whom do you think does the "sang noir" belong, friend or foe ?8. Last verse, last line: how could the song be rendered ?

ANSWERS

1 Litterally, the first line translates as: "Friend, can you hear the black flight of the crows over our plains ". The image conjures up carrion crows (the German occupying forces) like vultures ready to swoop upon the plains of France to pick over the remains of a defeated nation. Note the slightly incongruous juxtaposition of entendre and vol noir ("listen to a flight", rather than "watch a flight" or "listen to the cawing of the crows").

2. The alarm sounds for partisans, workers and farm workers to seek revenge: tonight the enemy will pay the price for blod and tears (i.e. their blood and tears will be shed).

3. The partisans are asked to use shotguns (fusils), machine guns (mitrailles), hand grenades (grenades), bullets (balles), knives (couteaux) and dynamite, to shoot and to blow up enemy targets.

5. They are asked to take direct action, to march and to die for their purpose, rather than just dream (of liberation) in their beds in another country.

6. If a partisan falls (dies) another partisan will carry ou his task (litterally "a friend comes out of the shadows to take your place").

7. Though the black blood that will dry under the sun on the roads of France could belong to either partisan or enemy, the line is, I believe, directed at the enemy: Demain (tomorrow) implies that if the partisan acts now, tomorrow it will be the enemy's blood that will coagulate under the sun.

8. You could whistle the song (sifflez, compagnons), as it indeed was.

funny, i thought i already deleted the wordpress account i created. i was planning to shift to wordpress but changed my mind coz it turns out you couldn't personalize your blog in wordpress. i still prefer my very own customized blog, no restrictions. :-)

thanks for linking the 'other' blog but i've decided to delete it for good. all posts there are still in my original blogsite.

Maybe it is time to heat up things on this blog. C'mon guys, you think you are better than others, but when people act, they are considered as "terrorists"? Are you only free in your own head then?? Have you ever heard about the word DEMAGOGY ? Of course not, it does not belong to american culture.

Ok, so let me put it this way: according to Trotsy, demonizing of the social-democrats and labeling them as fascist are crucial factors that lead to Hitler's rize to power. In the same thinking, you're saying that democrats are actually doing Bush a favour through their deliberate, it seems, mislable of his administration as fascist.Now by this deliberate libeling of Islam and Muslims and Arabs at large as fascists by Bush' neo-Islamophobes, isn't that supposed to generate a wave of sympathy towards Muslims and Arabs?Why does it only generate more and more hatered and hostility towards us, even from countries and peoples that used to be understanding of us and our culture?

When any government faces threaths of attack from forces inside and outside, it will naturally take on many of the 14 characteristics of fascist regimes. It has to in order to survive and to fulfill its obligation to protect its citizenry. Does that make it a fascist state? No, it makes it a state that is on a war footing. The key is to maintain a free and unencumbered press to act as a check on governmental excess and human rights. Currently, the US has this key ingredient. Compare this to Putin's Russia where the press must again tow the "official" line or face death at the hands of unknown forces (as recent events have shown).The fascist label is just another tool in the arsenal of partisan politics. It's been taken out of its box at election time as usual.

Tina: Bush is everything but fascist. I understand emotionally why someone would think that. In actual fascism, your blog would immediatly be closed, you'd be underground. Do Dems stand for democracy, and represent a different government?

Henry: Fascism is a unique to the capitalist system. Stalinism is different than Nazism on two counts: Nazism is based against particular nationalities, which can't be changed. Stalinism has class enemies,and you can change class. Nazism was for world domination, while Stalin was for socialism in one country.

David B: I agree with your post.

Daniel: You are correct to call for vigilance.

Troutsky: I agree.

YoungRadical: It was more than tactically wrong to call social-democrats fascist. The Stalinists at that time, were into "united front from below". See: Progressive Labor Party (US), a group that still follows that strategy.

GraemeAnfinson: I agree again.

Redwine: I agree.

Jams: I don't think he said demagogy is positive.

politiques USA: Dahlia never visits this blog. I think she'd fit in well here.

I think when you make the Eden references, and mention fairy tales, myth and religion, you are describing some of the more complex aspects of good old puritanism.

Thank you for the posts. They are the raw material for a book.

puppeteer: Why the term islamofascism brings more hatred to the US, because again it's misusing the term fascism.

Frederick: The article is not accurate about what fascism is. I wouldn't say, "sowing the seeds of fascism", I would say the seeds of accepting more war, or other reactionary policies.

"Stalinism has class enemies,and you can change class. Nazism was for world domination, while Stalin was for socialism in one country." - No, that was almost impossible. Families were also affected on the one hand, on the other, everybody with a diploma could be considered "class enemy". Class as such couldn't be and wasn't defined, as opposite to 'class enemy' - that could be everybody. (peasants as 'kulaks', etc., intellectuals, but also workers: basically everybody.)Experts who point out, that the Reich survived in Eastern Germany were right: from the basic structures to the vocabulary or the concept of the leader, it was there where it did survive. Today most of the racist attacks and neo-nazi manifestations happen in that region and the most developed cities of the former USSR. What a coincide4nce. But here the continuity was better kept alive....

This socialism in one country, I often wonder what the meaning of that could be or was (yes, yes, I know, still...). From here financing groups abroad, also: annexing states, and having as 'satellites' (i.e. colonies)several others, how is that 'one country'. What was country, what was class in this case?

"...even ordinary books are dangerous, and not only the ones like Make Gelignite the Professional Way. A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven't even read it are dying because the ones who did haven't got the joke."Terry Pratchett (The Last Continent)

Why do I get the idea that this quote summarises all utopias gone wrong...

end of dreams is a ard thing to come to terms with/..esp when one has been brough up on socialist ideology like mei suggest u read ashis nandythanks for dropping bydrop by oftenwhere did you find me on random pottins?